


build a throne (call me home)

by jumpfall



Series: Rescue 'Verse [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpfall/pseuds/jumpfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days Pepper tries to do everything and wonders if she’s succeeded at anything. Once in awhile though, when the stars align and the superheroes unite and everything falls into place just so, her personal and professional lives bleed together until they boil down to this: by day, she takes the business world by storm; by night, she fights crime!</p>
            </blockquote>





	build a throne (call me home)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third and final entry in the verse of 'babel, babel, look at me now' and 'shake my ash to the wind' to address some issues that didn't quite fit into those pieces. To complete the set, this title was inspired by 'Lover of the Light' from Mumford & Sons' album Babel.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has been reading, reviewing, and leaving kudos -- I fell behind on commenting as personal issues popped up, but I've been reading all the responses coming in and they've been heartwarming and spirit bolstering in turn.

The most dangerous thing Pepper Potts ever does is sign on the dotted line of an employment contract with Stark Industries. In the days that follow she leases an apartment she’s never seen, packs the last twenty-odd years of her life into boxes small enough to fit in the back of a 5x8 trailer, and moves across the country to do entry-level accounting for a corporation that the public ranks somewhere between Big Oil and Big Pharma on the list of necessary evils.  
  
Runners up include assuming the old joists in the attic of her childhood home would hold her weight (they didn’t), looking Obadiah Stane in the eye with the image of Tony in captivity fresh in her mind (he blinked), and putting her head aside long enough to follow her heart and sign on with the Avengers as Rescue (still worth it.)  
  
That last night in her old place though, that’s still the standard. New city, new people, same old Pepper. Sitting on the floor with the couch to her back, she wondered if maybe she was making a mistake. She couldn’t know that one day her new job would take her halfway across the world, that one day she’d meet the French ambassador with her boss standing behind her in a pair of jeans and one shoe, that one day the next person she’d come to rely on other than herself would be a man willing to take responsibility for the state of the world but not the contents of their fridge.  
  
With a freshly signed contract in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, what she tells herself is this: if this doesn’t work, at least I tried.  
  
The night Tony Stark offers her a job as his PA, she goes out and buys herself the pair of ruby red heels she’s had her eye on for a month. She tells herself it’s a celebration, but really it’s because she likes the way she feels when she wears them. Strong. Powerful. A little less like the woman with expired milk in her fridge and three weeks worth of laundry to do, a little more like the one permitted to do everything shy of withholding caffeine in the course of carrying out her new duties.  
  
She grows into the heels.  
  
-  
  
Between their Malibu home being swept into the ocean and Tony initiating proceedings for Team Treehouse, they move out to New York on a more permanent basis. A fraction of SI moves out with them to handle the expansion of the newly minted clean energy division into the low floors of Stark Tower, meaning they don’t need to scale back their Malibu operations and risk putting thousands of people out of work.  
  
This leads to Tony playing gofer with the sensitive tech that the charter he rewrote from the ground up after Obadiah necessitates remain on-site. As head of security, Happy spends a lot of time herding him around and being otherwise demanding during this process. Happy appreciates the irony in this. Tony does not.  
  
Pepper swings by at the end of the work day, just in time to see Tony turn one of his widest shit-eating grins on Happy. “Don’t get any ideas,” Happy warns him, arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t want a suit.”  
  
“I didn’t offer you a suit,” Tony points out because he did not, this is true.  
  
“You’ve never offered anyone a suit but what are Pepper and Rhodes flying around in? Your friends have a habit of ending up encased in metal. What I want is a phone that does what I tell it to, get to work on that and then come see me.”  
  
“I’m hurt,” Tony says, hand to chest. There are few people in the world who can give Tony shit for his tech being too complicated, but Happy Hogan is one of them.  
  
Tony takes them out to dinner that night, nominally in celebration of the successful move though curiously enough, no one else responsible for the logistics of the operation receives an invite. Happy wears a suit. Tony does not.  
  
Late into the evening and well into a bottle of wine, Pepper takes a minute to step back and look at the both of them. It seems like ages ago now that Happy was Tony’s chauffeur and she his PA, light years in jobs of their particular stress levels. Wherever they imagined they would be in five years’ time, they couldn’t have imagined this.  
  
“Look at us now,” Pepper says. Neither of them is going to, she knows them better than that. They won’t toast to Pepper’s victory over Killian or Happy’s recovery from the explosion at the Chinese Theatre or the progress Tony has made with his anxiety. Instead, Tony professes that Happy’s welcome in the penthouse anytime even if he’s a luddite and Happy punches him in the shoulder the way only a former bodyguard is allowed to. The effect is approximately the same, and she can’t help but smile.  
  
(Two weeks later, a phone with the designation StarkSimple appears on Happy’s desk. The software has been stripped down to basics and the GUI simplified, the menus redistributed to create a Try Here First settings menu containing frequently used functions.)  
  
-  
  
In response to the brief power outage of the 2012 Superbowl, the NFL contracts Stark Industries to design and build an uninterruptable power supply to outfit the relevant stadium for future events. It’s right up their alley, exactly the kind of job that keeps their stocks high and their investors happy.  
  
Pepper misses the contract negotiations because she’s across town fighting the two-headed self-replicating androids which have invaded the water treatment plant. She wasn’t rendered unable to attend. She didn’t even make a conscious choice not to. She simply forgot. She doesn’t realize it until later, by which point the meeting is already over, a compromise agreed upon, an email from her CFO in her inbox to be followed up on in the morning. He’s hit four of their five targets, no more than she was aiming for, negotiating the price up 20% in return for a dedicated SI support team during all future games.  
  
It still stings to a degree she wasn’t expecting. Between the legal department and her assistant Linda, the reminders have been frequent and increasing in urgency for as long as the meeting has been on the books. It would be less painful if she hadn’t been aware of it; instead, it is a fault and folly all her own, a point for her critics that PR can’t spin without revealing that she may have more balls in the air than she can handle. She spares a moment to wonder if this is what it was like for Tony near the end of his term, if this is a one-off event or a warning sign of things to come.  
  
Quiet footsteps from behind her signal Bruce’s arrival. He surveys her setup on the kitchen table with a knowing look, the first few paragraphs of the signed contract covering up her schedule for the week. The coffee at her elbow has gone cold in the hour since she sat down to take stock of the situation.  
  
Instead of asking after the situation at hand, he turns to the coffee maker on the counter. Coulson’s scratched pot looks almost tacky next to Tony’s gleaming silver appliance, but it does bulk in a way that is reassuringly comforting on nights like this. “There’s still half a pot left. Mind if I--?”  
  
“Be my guest.”  
  
Bruce came up through grad school on a diet of coffee the consistency of sludge because that’s what the machine on the third floor churned out, bless its heart. They could have invested in a new one, but funding was then and will always be dispersed according to the following priorities: 1) shiny new equipment (more powerful lasers, now in blue!), 2) materials (alternate definition: things to laser), 3) salaries (to provide sustenance such that the lasering may continue in the future.)  
  
There’s no room for coffee in the budget unless it can be justified as essential materials. Bruce was party to a grant application which tried. It was only partially satiric.  
  
The point is, it makes him easy to please. His palate has evolved an inability to tell the difference between Tony’s egregiously overpriced beans and off brand powder out of sheer preservation.  
  
“Going to be up long?” he asks, leaning on the counter.  
  
“I hope not, it’s late enough already. Shouldn’t you be in bed yourself?”  
  
“Technically, I’ve only been up for three hours,” Bruce points out. It would be more of a joke if the line of his shoulders wasn’t rigid like it’s something to be ashamed of. It’s hard to characterize what restraint looks like in the other guy, but at worst, he finished the battle on neutral ground.  
  
“How did the new fabric hold up?”  
  
“It ended up as more of a drop sheet than a pair of pants after the change. Tony’s running tests now. I must admit, I’ve seen a lot of reactions to experimental failure but I’ve never seen an engineer look personally offended by it before.”  
  
“You get used to it,” she says fondly, and Bruce looks down at the warm mug in his hands to hide his quiet snort of laughter.  
  
“Something to look forward to,” he says diplomatically, as if he hasn’t thought about it. Certainly Tony has, at length and with great enthusiasm though he’s kept the majority of his plans to himself. For all his wealth, Tony understands the nature of debt. He respects the weight of it and has refrained from offering any more than Bruce would be willing to accept.  
  
“And you?” he presses further, gesturing at the open files with his mug. “Is that something to look forward to?”  
  
The email from her CFO ends with ‘if you’re in the office tomorrow’ and it reads more bitingly than Zach probably intended after a friendly ten year working relationship. Still, a part of her wonders if he too is beginning to have his doubts.  
  
“Have you ever failed at something when you were trying your hardest?” she asks, too lost in her thoughts to consider the implications of that question to that man until it is already between them.  
  
A long moment passes between them when she’s sure he won’t respond, which is just as well, the irony almost cruel however unintentional. “Once or twice,” he says at last.  
  
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have--.”  
  
“It’s fine,” he waves her off. “Suffice it to say it’s familiar ground.”  
  
“How do you handle it?”  
  
“I don’t know that you ever really do. You take a step back, reevaluate, change what you need to change. You don’t make the same mistake twice.” The lines around his eyes deepen he speaks, aging him considerably. Despite the weight of the conversation between them, there’s an unmistakeable warmth to his eyes. Bruce’s biggest secret is not his distressing alternative to anger management but his secret affection for people in general. He’s not social in the way Tony is – no one is quite social in the way Tony is – but he connects with people.  
  
“You think so?”  
  
“If not, there’s always stretchy pants,” he says offhandedly.  
  
An explosion rumbles beneath their feet. “Sir has triggered the sprinkler system on the workshop level and wishes me to inform all conscious parties that the situation is contained,” JARVIS informs them momentarily.  
  
“There is that,” she says, and finishes her cold coffee.  
  
-  
  
The morning after Pepper begs off team bonding to take a conference call with Japan, Coulson makes an appointment with one of her assistants for twenty minutes of her time.  
  
He knocks on her door at three promptly, a tray of coffee and danishes in his free hand. It looks an awful lot like a peace offering, to which she raises an eyebrow. “Are you asking permission or forgiveness?”  
  
In lieu of a response, he pries her coffee out of the cardboard tray and holds it out to her. It’s still steaming and tastes freshly brewed, her usual order from the shop she stops at on her way into work. If it is a peace offering, Phil’s done it properly.  
  
“If you’re here to tell me I can’t do it all--,” she says, and he holds up a hand.  
  
“That’s not my call to make and not why I’m here. I wanted to touch base with you and see if there’s anything SHIELD can do to support SI at this time,” he responds, and his matter-of-fact tone goes a long way towards soothing her pride. For all Phil is a friend, she’s had enough of other people’s opinions on what she can and cannot handle.  
  
“SHIELD and SI, huh?” she says around a smile. No one truly understands her affinity for mixing personal with professional quite like Coulson does.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“In that case, SI wonders if SHIELD has any advice on striking the right bureaucracy-superheroing balance.”  
  
A long, puckered scar runs along Phil’s side where Loki ran him through with his scepter. He hasn’t spoken of it, but she isn’t the only one to have noticed that he holds himself carefully some nights, favoring stiff chairs with high backs as opposed to the plush couches which run the risk of swallowing smaller team members whole. He’s not the only one of their team to have walked the line she finds herself straddling, but he’s the first to address it so openly.  
  
“It takes a village,” Phil says, and there’s a certain warmth to his lack of inflection inasmuch as it equally lacks judgement.  
  
-  
  
Three mornings a week, usually when Pepper’s schedule is light but once in awhile when her calendar is wall-to-wall conflicts and she is forced to choose between offending a client or the division responsible for satisfying that client, Natasha texts her a time and a place. Sometimes it’s a restaurant in the city where Natasha will meet her for lunch. Sometimes it’s a fire that needs to be put out in only the way a CEO can. Once it was an animal shelter, where the employee working the counter informed her that they were low on volunteers and would she want to spend some time with the puppies while she was there.  
  
Usually the place is Stark Tower and Natasha will invite Pepper to train with her in a way that suggests the matter is not optional. Often other team members will make an appearance, mostly Steve and Clint, rarely Bruce. A minimum of once a week and excluding undercover assignments, they’ll assemble in the gym, the pool, or on the roof and Steve will run them through a series of drills.  
  
Occasionally, usually Thursdays, it will be just the two of them. Natasha will push her harder than anyone else would have, sweeping her feet out from beneath her and bending her limbs back in ways that even Extremis can’t tolerate and otherwise bruising everything up to and including her pride. It will be, she says, a fraction of what she learned as a child and considerably more of what she didn’t.  
  
Pepper takes to keeping a pair of running shoes under her desk.  
  
-  
  
The most generous thing that can be said about her post-battle landing is that she’s still upright after the wobbling has levelled out. Tony comes in right on her heels, touching down on the roof of Stark Tower rather than the disassembly platform on the balcony. JARVIS triggers the slide as soon as they’re both properly aligned on the sensors, depositing them in the workshop where there are no witnesses to see them lie down in their battle-dented armors and relearn how to breathe.  
  
Dummy’s ready with the bottle of water as soon as she pops the faceplate open, setting it down gently beside her spread-eagled form on the concrete. There’s a delocalized warmth underneath her skin, a phantom thrum in her calves still present though the vibrations of the thrusters in extended flight have ceased. Her joints ache from tension and impact alike, and already she’s grateful that Extremis has twenty-odd hours to get her ship shape before the quarterly board meeting.  
  
A creak sounds from beside her as Tony pops his helmet off outright, paying no attention to the water bottle Dummy has thoughtfully placed on his chest plate. He holds the helmet out in front of him, giving Pepper a view of the dimmed HUD and sweat-soaked padding which keeps his head in place and buffers impact during flight. Like the rest of the armor, it’s just a shell without the man embodying it.  
  
“This is working, right?” he says, his tone measured, a weight to his words that suggests he’s come to the conclusion it might not be.  
  
It’s not unfounded. She’s not sure she knew what she was getting herself into when she signed up as part of the team in addition to her duties as CEO; the challenge of balancing the two roles is something that has to be lived to be understood. Despite the assistance of her support staff at SI through the transition and associated media scrutiny, there’s going to be a day when priorities conflict. Villains are not known for their courteous timing. She doesn’t know which side she’ll land on when that day comes to pass, whether she’ll step into heels or repulsor boots to face the battle.  
  
It takes a village, Coulson had said. You have to want it, he had not, because he reads people better than that. She did. She does. The Rescue suit doesn’t obligate her to fight alongside the team any more than Steve’s legacy does – that was a choice she made from the outset, it’s one she makes every time she takes not only her life but those around her in her hands when she kicks it into high gear at cruising altitude, her fingertips tingling with the rush of the cityscape on the horizon.  
  
“I think so,” she says. It has so far. She hopes more than anything that’ll continue, but there’s enough history between them that she doesn’t mistakes wishes for wills. For all the power at their fingertips there’s a hell of a lot out of their collective control.  
  
“You’ll tell me if that changes?”  
  
“I always do.”  
  
It takes JARVIS’ assistance for the bots to pry back the metal seams along her torso and gain access to the joint releases which enable quick removal of the chest piece. Dummy spins figure eights around them as the same process is repeated on Tony, the Iron Man helmet in his claw.  
  
The team’s collection of ice packs has already been deposited on the coffee table by the time they make it upstairs. Like the others before them, both she and Tony collect one as they pass.  
  
Some days they feel less like superheroes and more like premature arthritis patients.  
  
-  
  
Next to Tony (and depending on the division, arguably on par with), Thor is the best informed regarding the day-to-day business of SI. He takes to cable news with a ferocity that surprises no one who’s been paying attention to the right things.  
  
JARVIS keeps track of approximately two dozen local and national news networks worldwide, presenting a compilation of the day’s events and analyses for viewing in the evenings before dinner, depending on whose night it is to cook. Thor watches them all in turn, Allspeak smoothing the transition from BBC to Al-Jazeera.  
  
“Your people question your leaders so openly,” he remarks one night. “It is refreshing,” he adds over the rest of the team’s objections.  
  
When Steve takes to joining him, JARVIS begins providing English subtitles without comment. Steve picked up a working knowledge of the relevant languages overseas, but there are certain nuances to the syntax which never came up on the battlefield.  
  
“I appreciate the insight into public opinion this provides,” Thor explains when asked. “Asgard lacks such a medium for discourse.”  
  
The image of Loki as a pundit is particularly foul, and not one anyone dares share with Thor.  
  
“It is regrettable that your stocks dropped following your involvement in last week’s battle. You fought admirably,” he says to her one night. He doesn’t offer to defend her honour in the media, because it wouldn’t do a damn thing; for all his power derives from birthright, Thor plays the political game remarkably well.  
  
-  
  
Rhodey takes her flying during one of his weekends on leave. Iron Patriot is slightly more compact than War Machine on the whole, better suited to the exercises he’s running her through. Together they make for a splash of color over the open waters of the Atlantic, his airbrushed blue against her deep reds. She’s thinking about a purple paint job, but the media has only just gotten over Rhodey’s patriotic rebrand. She’ll save that particular uproar for when she really needs a laugh.  
  
“Your training is coming along nicely,” he comments after running her through a series of evasive maneuvers. “How are you handling the nausea at high G’s?”  
  
She declines to respond and he laughs, the tone warm rather than condescending even through the mechanized speakers of the suit. “Sounds about right. Chewing gum is a choking hazard, but an antacid before suiting up can help. For the rest, that’s why we’re out here.”  
  
The military would like to use Rescue to relaunch what Hammer’s show of force started, but that’s a topic for another day. It’s in the hands of the lawyers for now. Out here, the Colonel is just Rhodey.  
  
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says around a laugh of her own, and she sees him smile through the video link on the HUD. She feels a certain kinsmanship with him, the two of them hovering out here in metal suits built by a man who has mastered the concept but not the scale of the gesture as a tool of relationship management. Though Tony connects them, he isn’t the only thing they have in common. Rhodey’s friendship with her is different than his friendship with Tony, and theirs is built on a foundation of mutual respect as opposed to mutual one-upmanship.  
  
“I’d ask if this is really what you want, but it’s 0700h and you’re out here getting dumped in the ocean when you could be in bed.”  
  
“It’s almost like sleeping in.”  
  
“If you say so.”  
  
“With more of a rude awakening.”  
  
“It lacks JARVIS informing you of your nearest emergency exit, though.”  
  
“You may have a point there,” she says, resting on the floating dock they brought out with them. Rhodey comes in low to hover just offside, the trail from the thrusters rippling the surface of the ocean as he gives her a moment to collect herself.  
  
She lets the hand closest to him drop into the ocean, splashing him when he opens the faceplate to feel the light breeze on an otherwise dreary morning. With a splutter unbefitting a man of his rank, he cuts the thrusters, brings his knees up, and drops like a stone into the water. The faceplate snaps shut just before he breaks the surface, and the resulting cannonball both soaks her and sends the dock nearly vertical in the resultant waves.  
  
She waits until he’s back up in the sky with her to say, “Again?”  
  
“Ready when you are.”  
  
-  
  
“How did you do both?” she asks Tony one night, sweeping her hair back in a loose grip so it doesn’t get caught in the zipper of her dress as they prepare for the gala of the night.  
  
“What?” he asks from the other side of the room, dress shirt open and wearing exactly one shoe. It reminds her of the first time she met the French ambassador so suddenly that she has to turn away to hide a smile.  
  
“Iron Man, CEO.”  
  
“I had you,” he says without thinking about it. When she scoffs, he stops what he’s doing to look up at her. “Why is that funny? You do _remember_ dragging me out of the workshop by an ear? Or had Stockholm Syndrome kicked in by that point?”  
  
It doesn’t make her feel any better, but it seems to spark something in Tony. She falls asleep at the dinner table on a Sunday and wakes up on the couch, a throw tucked carefully around her. She chalks it up to jet lag but Tony puts on a suit and tie and shows up at work on Monday nonetheless. After lunch of course, he never has been much of an early riser.  
  
Sitting in her office, he triages her schedule the way she used to do for him and assigns himself the tasks she enjoys the least. Over the course of an afternoon, he browbeats the assistant head of PR into justifying his project budget, sits down with legal to hash out the latest round of negotiations with SHIELD for the distribution of Avengers-branded merchandise, and invites himself to a meeting with the upper echelons of R &D to officially review proposed alterations to the timeline and unofficially put them back on track.  
  
He’s still there when she drops by the top floor conference room at six, three laptops running in parallel as he debugs code with the lead programmers on the project.  
  
“It occurred to me that it took the two of us to keep the company running before,” he says on a break, when the rest of the room has cleared out to scrounge up dinner. His tie is loose around his neck, hair mussed like he’s been running his hands through it. “But since I dumped it in your lap, it’s just been you.”  
  
“It was a gift,” she says. Regardless of Tony’s complicated relationship with his father, Stark Industries was his birthright. You don’t hand over the reins to something like that on a whim.  
  
“Doesn’t stop it from being a burden,” he points out. “I wanted to be rid of it.”  
  
The thought has crossed her mind before, but it’s the first he’s admitted it to her and when faced with a declaration like that, she finds she only has one thing to say. “Do you mean to say you want it back?”  
  
“Oh, God, no,” he says, and she relaxes where she hadn’t realized she’d tensed up. That’s a bridge she doesn’t want to cross. However temporary a measure he may have intended it to be, the company is in her name now and she’d fight for it -- she likes the work she does, the people she works with, what SI is shaping up to be in the future. “But you have more on your plate than you did when we signed the papers, and I know how time consuming engineer-wrangling can be. Let me take that over, and you’ll have more time to wrangle this engineer in particular.”  
  
“This is a benefit?” she asks, and he snorts, the tip of his tongue caught between his upper and lower teeth in a grin as he turns his attention back to the blueprints for the hospital generators. She comes around the side of the table to join him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. He twists, shifting his weight to pull her down onto his lap.  
  
“I’m pretty sure insulting Murray is a violation of his contract,” she points out, glancing at Tony’s scribbled notes on the virtual blueprint.  
  
“It’ll do his ego good,” Tony responds. Pepper would object, but Murray once called Tony a chucklefuck and then defended Tony’s design to the rest of the department. She doesn’t claim to understand their antagonistic relationship. It works for them.  
      
It’s the first work day in over two weeks she makes it home while the sun is still in the sky.  
  
-

“Steve?”  
  
“Yes, Pepper?”  
  
“This seemed like a good idea at the time, right?”  
  
“It still does. Just slightly…larger of an idea than we were anticipating.”  
  
A wall of televisions displays coverage of the empty podium at the front of the cavernous room, a series of microphones set upon a raised table with SHIELD and NYC logos covering the white backdrop. The crawler reads ‘ETA 5 MINS TO AVENGERS PRESS CONFERENCE.’  
  
Maria Hill steps out in front of them, index finger to her ever-present earpiece while she hears out what’s being said on the other end of the line. “We’re set,” she confirms, both to herself and to them. “Agent Coulson will be going out with the mayor first to set boundaries and answer preliminary questions ahead of the rest of you.”  
  
By ‘the rest of you’ Maria means Steve, Pepper, and Thor; everyone else found somewhere else to be when the event notification was phrased as an invitation rather than a threat.  
  
-  
  
Pepper usually favours the lane at the far end of the range because it’s set furthest back from the entrance. Isolation isn’t an advantage they possess in the field but it makes it easier to concentrate when practicing. Two empty quivers of arrows propped against an open case suggest that great minds think alike though, and she takes the lane next to Clint instead with a waved greeting that receives a nod in return.  
  
Her slowly improving aim makes target practice an ideal activity to clear her mind. Natasha says that form will become instinctive with time, but until such time arrives Pepper has a checklist of things to think about while she lines up her shot. 45 degree angle to her target, dominant foot back, supporting hand angled lower to control the recoil. Exhale on the trigger pull. Checking and holding her form makes it easy to forget the events of the day and focus on the red bull’s-eye at the end of the range.  
  
Shooting was never one of her strong suits even before Extremis, not exactly a skill set she ever saw herself needing. Steve believes firmly in cross-training though, which means Thor is learning how to fly the jet and Bruce is learning how to care for the suits and she’s learning how to shoot. No one wants to pull wheels up at the eleventh hour only to find they can’t take off because someone left the parking brake on.  
  
Clint waits until she’s emptied her clip into a paper target to ask, “Phil talk to you about tomorrow?” He’s carefully crafted an easy-going appearance for the day in a loose t-shirt and jeans, just a tinge of a yellowing bruise visible beneath the tightly wrapped forearm where he was sliced in the last battle by a bot who took exception to the arrow through its nerve centre.  
  
“He asked if I was free at seven, but wouldn’t tell me what for.”  
  
“It’s his birthday. He doesn’t want anyone to know, just a low-key evening. No gifts.”  
  
“That’s cute,” she says.  
  
“I thought so, too. Fury’s bringing a cake and two Mets tickets for the long weekend coming up. You think Tony would hack the security cameras and get me a still of those two at a game?” he asks, pressing the return button for her lane. A new paper target cycles forward as the old one comes to a stop just before them.  
  
“In a heartbeat. Can you think of anything else he’d want? I got him a Jayne hat for Hanukkah last year.”  
  
“It’s sitting on our dresser below the signed autograph of Gina Torres that Natasha got him after a disastrous mission in Bolivia. She’s making appetizers, by the way.” Clint inspects the results of her last target and adds, “Nice grouping, but you’re still too far left. C’mere a second.”  
  
She flips the safety on the handgun and sets it down with the barrel pointing out at the open range before coming to stand before him. He positions her directly in front him and then steps back, balling one of his hands up into a fist. “Hold your hands out at shoulder height, make a triangle with your thumbs and the sides of your hands, just like that, yeah. Center my fist in the gap.” He waits for her to adjust her positioning before adding, “Close your right eye.”  
  
She does, and the fist that had been centered in her field of vision suddenly disappears behind her left hand. “Damn,” she says, and Clint grins.  
  
“We’ve been training you as though you were left eye dominant. This might help.”  
  
“I could’ve sworn I used to be.”  
  
“Extremis,” he points out, because that has become a catch-all term for anything that doesn’t go according to plan these days. Why does it take three times more coffee than it used to in order to achieve the same buzz? Extremis. Why is she no longer allergic to strawberries? Extremis. Why did she encounter traffic on the way home? Extremis.  
  
“Is Natasha making crab puffs?” Pepper asks, snapping a fresh clip into place to try again.  
  
“If persuaded.”  
  
“I’ll start persuading.”  
  
-  
  
Director Fury does indeed bring a cake. Phil takes one look at the upside down cheesecake with Happy Birthday scrawled on the top in bright blue icing and says, “Please tell me you blackmailed someone into baking that.”  
  
“Screw you Coulson, you love my cheesecake.”  
  
“Minus the one time that you--.”  
  
“You will shut up and enjoy it, Agent. It’s chocolate.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
Pepper leaves them to their bickering as she heads for the kitchen where Thor is arranging the regalia of a traditional Asgardian feast with the Business News Network on mute in the background. “Congratulations on your good fortune, it is well earned,” he says, nodding at the ticker where their stock is up six dollars to the share since the NBA approached Stark Industries in the wake of the successful NFL contract.  
  
“Ow ow _ow_ , Nat, you might bend that way but I don’t. Will you just--?”  
  
“Sit still or I will make you,” Natasha mutters, her voice carrying over the sound of Jane asking whether the goblets are key or if wine glasses will do. At the head of the table, Natasha finishes manhandling Clint and turns him to face Pepper for inspection.  
  
“You look handsome,” she says, handing over the box she’s been holding on to for safekeeping.  
  
“Thanks for this,” he says, slipping the box into his pocket and brushing off the compliment. “Phil’s got a level seven security clearance but doesn’t hold with the idea of a surprise gift, I don’t even know what to do with that.”  
  
“Tony and Bruce are playing with their toys in the lab. Steve went to fetch them a few minutes ago,” Natasha informs her.  
  
“Hey, I was testing a flame retardant material for your new jumpsuit,” Tony objects, Steve riding herd on both him and Bruce as they join the group in the kitchen. “Black Widow is far too graceful to be stop, drop, and rolling like the rest of us mere mortals.” The phrase ‘mere mortals’ obtains three separate looks of disbelief, with Bruce shaking his head and turning to greet the newly arrived Jasper Sitwell and Maria Hill.  
  
“Really?” she asks.  
  
“Kidding! Totally kidding, hon, I was on the conference call with Murray – you remember Murray, Ms. Rushman?”  
  
“Is he the one that called you the most aggravatingly correct jackass he’s ever had the privilege of working alongside?” Natasha asks, perking up. “I liked him. How is he?”  
  
“He’s off next week, taking the kids to Disneyland or Vegas or something. Anyways, I was on the conference call with Murray and the commissioner of the NHL talking about their power requirements. You’ve got a 1:00 with them next Tuesday by the way, Pep,” he says, kissing her on the cheek.  
  
“We’ll push team training back until 4:00 then,” Steve adds. “Bruce, does that conflict with your flying lessons?”  
  
“Clint?”  
  
“New recruits are on an off week, apparently they embarrassed the range master last week and need more target practice ahead of the next dry run. Should be fine.”  
  
“Great! Done deal,” Tony says. “Can we eat now?”  
  
In unison, all the phones in the room ring. “Incoming call to the tower from SHIELD,” JARVIS adds unnecessarily.  
  
“The roast has half an hour in the oven left. Let’s make this a quick one, guys, Fury’s cheesecake is actually really good,” Clint says.  
  
-  
  
Some days are easier than others. Some days she tries to do everything and wonders if she’s succeeded at anything, days when she misses a training session to prepare a presentation to the board and misses a press conference to go fight Doombots.  
  
Once in awhile though, when the stars align and the superheroes unite and everything falls into place just so, Pepper’s personal and professional lives bleed together until they boil down to this: by day, she takes the business world by storm; by night, she fights crime!  
  
Her life is considerably cheesier than it has any right to be.


End file.
